EDITOR'S TABLE. 



271 



erybody has seen that it was awk- 

 ward, anomalous, and embarrassing. 

 There was a great daunting of milita- 

 ry parade, suggestive of righting; but, 

 apart from the historic reminiscences, 

 the speeches contradicted the whole 

 spirit of the occasion. It was by no 

 means devoted to unalloyed rejoicing 

 over a military triumph, but was much 

 more a tribute to the interests of peace 

 and international friendliness. A hun- 

 dred years makes a great difference 

 nowadays, and the Yorktown utter- 

 ances were significant registers of the 

 progress of ideas. The new President 

 spoke with wise discretion, and gave 

 voice to the wishes of the American peo- 

 ple by ordering that the commemora- 

 tive services close with a salute to the 

 British flag by the assembled forces of 

 the army and navy, " in recognition 

 of the friendly relations so long and so 

 happily subsisting between Great Brit- 

 ain and the United States, in the trust 

 and confidence of peace and good-will 

 between the two countries for all the 

 centuries to come, and especially as a 

 mark of the profound respect enter- 

 tained by the American people for the 

 illustrious sovereign and gracious lady 

 who sits upon the British throne." 



Nothing could be more significant, 

 as showing the growth of liberal ideas 

 with reference to our external relations. 

 It signalized the hope that time will 

 secure in the family of nations what we 

 have secured in the family of States. 

 "We can not expect peace " for all the 

 centuries to come " except by cher- 

 ishing the ideas and strengthening the 

 sentiments and confirming the prac- 

 tices upon which peace depends. We 

 can not have exemption from war if we 

 cultivate the spirit of international an- 

 tagonism antagonism that tendsto war. 

 Nations must be knit together by closer 

 links of mutual interest if peace is to 

 be permanent. "War isolates, destroys 

 commercial intercourse, and drives na- 

 tions into the policy of producing every- 

 thing for themselves; and the feeling 



thus engendered by military domina- 

 tion in time of peace maintains barriers 

 and repulsions between nations, on the 

 plea that " we must not be dependent 

 upon foreigners." The curses of war 

 thus become perpetual. Its baneful in- 

 fluence lives on in the so-called " pro- 

 tective " policy which strangles foreign 

 commerce, and compels a nation to 

 shape all its internal affairs with a view, 

 not to the interests of industry which 

 demand the widest liberty of commer- 

 cial expansion, but to the future con- 

 tingencies of war. 



MILITANCY AND INDUSTRIALISM IN 

 VIRGINIA. 



No better illustration can be desired 

 of these views than that offered by the 

 State of Virginia. Her citizens were 

 certainly to be pardoned for their en- 

 thusiasm over the Yorktown pageant. 

 The Revolution was consummated upon 

 her soil, and she has a natural pride in 

 all its reminiscences. But what a mon- 

 ument is that great State to-day of the 

 scourge of war-ideas ! Settled early as 

 a colony, favorably situated in regard 

 to climate, and with varied and bound- 

 less resources, she is nevertheless poor, 

 incompetent, and backward in all the 

 elements of public prosperity. If it be 

 said that these calamities are due to 

 slavery, we reply that slavery is only 

 chronic and subdivided war. Slavery 

 and war are kindred agencies, grown up 

 together in a common barbarism, and 

 both are despotisms of violence. Their 

 one idea is the brute-force control of 

 men in war for the destruction of life 

 and property, and in slavery for better 

 ends. It was the cherishing of ideas 

 common to slavery and war that drew 

 Virginia with such facility into the vor- 

 tex of domestic war. It was declining 

 militancy rebelling against growing in- 

 dustrialism. How intense was the bar- 

 baric spirit is seen in the persistence of 

 obsolete war-usages. Where militant 

 ideas are ascendant, as in Germany and 



